


By every measure ceded

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: City Elf Origin, Gen, but you can kill the heck out of the bad guy, there are no happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 19:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: It was Summerday, and Caitwyn Tabris should have gotten married.  She did not.





	By every measure ceded

She could do this.

 

Caitwyn stripped off her nightshirt and set it aside, folding it carefully on her bed.  She wouldn’t be coming back here after the wedding.  After the wedding, she’d be a wife and would live in a different house with her husband.  It would still be a rickety house that creaked in a strong breeze, but she wouldn’t know what floorboard squeaked or how to nudge the door just so to keep it latched properly.

 

Her fingers dug into the fabric of her wedding dress as she held it to her chest.  It had lain in her chest of clothes for a year now.  A year since her father had told her he was looking for a husband for her, a year since she’d dutifully saved up for the fabric and stitched together with Shianni and a rotating cadre of aunties.  Because Mama wasn’t here to help her.

 

Tugging the dress on over her head, she took a moment to rearrange her hair, to try to contain the bramble of curls that refused to be tamed.  Years ago, Mama had kept it cut short, but Cait had grown it out in the years since.  Granny Neave had told her there was no shame in looking pretty for husband.  Granny Neave had also told her a lot of things weren’t shameful between a wife and a husband.  Smoothing down her dress, she let out a slow breath and went to find Soris.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll do everything I can to make you happy,” Neralos, her betrothed told her, and Caitwyn’s heart fluttered in a way completely foreign to her.  While Soris groused about his bride-to-be, Caitwyn kept her own cautious happiness close to her chest.  Neralos had kind eyes, she thought, a gentle disposition.  _Hope for a gentle man, little shadow_ , Mama had said when Caitwyn had childishly asked after lords and princes.  When she had been too young to understand that _gentlemen_ were not so gentle.

 

She watched Neralos as he departed to go get ready, only half hearing the startled shouts of her kin.  Some disturbance or another was usual in the Alienage, even on Summerday, the day people got married.  A shadow of a smile curved her lips, and she thought this didn’t need to be so fightening.

 

She could do this.

 

* * *

 

The sword slid toward her across the stones of the floor, the guards too slow and stupid to realize what was about to happen to them.  Caitwyn’s teeth were clenched and bared in a snarl, and she felt ice creaking and cracking along her veins, like when the river froze.  Cold and terrible, she advanced on the men and between her and Soris they cut the shems down.

 

Through the estate, they cut a bloody swath, and Caitwyn watched as her future died.  Neralos, his kind eyes clouding over with death, and his gentle voice gurgling on his own blood, and there was nothing she could do.  She arrived too late, to see Shianni on the floor, blood staining her dress and curled up like a wounded animal. 

 

The bastard gloated, offered her _money_ , as if money would bring back the dead.  As if money would undo what had been done to her cousin.  Her fingers tightened on the hilts of the sword and dagger, the dagger picked up from some dead shem. 

 

He smirked as he spoke, a smug curl to his lips and a voice as sinister as a snake’s, “And this will all go away.”

 

She could do this.

 

“You _die_ ,” she spat, and lunged forward.

 

* * *

 

Soris gulped as the guardsmen approached.  They’d made it back to the Alienage mere steps ahead of the humans, come to claim justice for their dead lord.  But there would be no justice for her people, two dead and one… one forever hurt.  Caitwyn’s stomach roiled, caught between relief that it had not been her, and wishing she had made them take her instead of Shianni.  She could have done something, killed him while he’d been on top of her.  At least Shianni would have been spared.

 

Caitwyn kept her face a mask, like how Mama had taught her, though she watched to see what this Warden would do.  He had given Soris and Neralos the weapons they’d needed to help free her, but he did not go any further than that.

 

She could do this.

 

Stepping forward, Caitwyn let them focus on her.  One lone girl elf did all that they accused her of.  Let Soris go home to his wife, let Soris have his future.  She’d lost hers in the fell snick of a sword.

 

“I believe I have found what I came here for,” the Warden declared, and like that she was snatched away from the hungry jaws of the hangman’s noose.  She had but moments, moments to say good-bye.  To flee this city and pray that her family would be safe.  Shianni had Nessa and Valora, women to look after her.  Papa, Papa sighed and held her close, his hopes for her ashes and dust.

 

“Be safe, firebug,” he whispered to her, but she had no assurances to offer him.  A Warden’s life was not one of safety, if she remembered the stories right.  Head high, she returned to Duncan, pack on her back, all her stolen weapons still on her.  She’d earned this, and damned if she’d let them go.

 

“Are you ready to depart?” he asked, and Caitwyn met his eyes.  They were dark eyes, and though there might be kindness in them, there was also something hard.  They were eyes like Mama had, and Caitwyn raised her chin.

 

“Yes,” she said, not willing to waste words on another shem at the moment, even if he was supposedly friendly to their people.  Denerim and her people were behind her, the life of a Warden and war in front of her.  Her future had been sure this morning, and now it was anything but.

 

She could do this.


End file.
